Lucksi wrote:Ah, ever so great to read an article completly devoid of facts.

It's not an article. It's an editorial.

Is "lawful" self defense the same that gets extended to cops? I.e. they can legally murder someone -even on tape- and be found not guilty because that shooting was totally justified according to other cops.

What?

Here ya go Lucksi: A .pdf FILLED with statistics!

A few interesting bits and pieces:

State of Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services wrote:-Analyses indicate a decline in both nonfatal firearm incidents and victims over the past several years. In 1993, the firearm crime rate was 5.9 per 1,000 residents. By 2009, this rate had decreased to 1.4 per 1,000 residents. Likewise, in 1993, 11 percent of all violent crimes involved a firearm. By 2009, this had decreased to eight percent.
-There is often more than one offense (i.e., crime) that occurs within a given incident. Consequently, of the 36,318 incidents reported in OIBRS between 2007-2009, there were 43,653 corresponding offenses. Three offenses—robbery, weapon law violations, and aggravated assault—made up over 78 percent of all offenses reported.
-Between 1999 and 2008, there were 10,270 deaths caused by firearms. Suicides were the most frequently reported cause of death due to firearms, accounting for 63 percent of all deaths. Thirty-four percent were assaults (homicides) by firearms. Two percent of deaths were due to the accidental discharge of a firearm, and in less than one percent the intent was undetermined.

Graphs are in the paper, if you'd like to know how many people "got shot" each year. While there does appear to be a slight trend upward, that does not necessarily (and I believe is unlikely to) correlate with the passage of the discussed law. The trend appeared before the law was passed in 2003, and there was no particular spike in the years following the law.

The use of statistically insignificant in this article is used to show lives saved by the lawful use of a licensed handgun for self defense significantly outweighs the statistic for lives lost by the unlawful use of a licensed handgun. You can argue that if there were no guns held by these people, no lives would have been lost which is obviously a fantastic thing. However, that does open up the question of how many lives would not have been saved.

While you're obviously troll-baiting in the last statement, I'll try to address it. Murder is defined as killing someone unlawfully, therefore it is impossible by definition to "legally murder" someone. If you maintain it should never be lawful to kill someone, that's a different discussion that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your beef with legal firearms, they're simply a method used, not the act.

Lucksi wrote:Is "lawful" self defense the same that gets extended to cops? I.e. they can legally murder someone -even on tape- and be found not guilty because that shooting was totally justified according to other cops.

There's a big difference between murder and justifiable homicide. In the overwhelming majority of cases, it's quite clear that the police were justified. In most of the remaining cases, the evidence leans in favor of the cops.

There are cases, though, where there are significant doubts or clear malfeasance. These include the recent Kelly Thomas case where two Fullerton, CA, police officers are on trial for the death of a schizophrenic homeless man (known to the police to have mental issues) who at first resisted the search but eventually complied and was still beaten.

The same laws generally apply to private individuals that apply to police: deadly force can be used to protect oneself, one's family, or a member of the public. In some states, deadly force by private citizens can also be used to protect property (the castle doctrine), but in others, a reasonable effort to retreat to safety must be made before using deadly force. Whacking someone in the back of the leg with a bat to keep him from carrying off something is questionable.

Or laudable. The only question is what the laws and DA are like where you live.

Interesting developments in the world of the Second Amendment. First, open carry becomes an option in Oklahoma. And in Louisiana, an amendment to the state constitution shoring up the right to keep and bear arms has made it through their House and Senate and is on its way to voters. Apparently the state supreme court had previously ruled that because there weren't any clear provisions protecting citizens' Second Amendment rights, the state gets to infringe to its heart's content. So a clear provision is now in the works.

The FBI just released its crime report. As expected (by me) in an era of 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens being gradually infringed on less and less, violent crime dropped yet again.

Preliminary crime statistics for 2011 released today by the FBI show a 4 percent decrease in violent crime--a continuation of a long-term downward trend nationwide. The report highlights that all four violent crime categories--murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault--declined in the country's four major geographical regions and in all city population groups.

The report also noted that violent crime decreased both in metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties. The continuing decrease in violent crime comes at a time when firearms ownership has increased across America, a fact that utterly contradicts the mantra of anti-gun groups that more guns equals more crime.

A PDF copy of the report is available here.

Apropos of nothing, this discussion has been ongoing for nearly nine years.

That makes me happy.

Hooray!

I just noticed that my current Tracer Bullet avatar is quite apt.

Between the UN thinking maybe they can sneak past a civilian arms ban treaty ratification without going through Congress, Bloomberg inciting police around the country to strike until civilian firearms are banned, and Obama using his former Chief of Staff's motto Non Discrimen Vastata to leverage the fact that civilians in the Aurora theater were legally barred from using their Second Amendment rights to defend themselves into a resurrection of the old weapons ban with new and further reaches, the Bill of Rights is under some very serious attack.

I can only hope reason prevails against the the feverish, ardent demands for Americans to surrender even more of their freedoms in the name of false security. We cannot let misguided appeals to emotion and a desire to be ruled drive the renewed short-sighted attempts to wrest power from the citizen and hand it on bended knee to the politician du jour.

A fine idea, but I think to succeed at this point you will need to turn to either violent rebellion or mass agorism.

Insight into gun buying trends in the US: it's not just Obama driving sales and isn't just a recent development. Interesting (and encouraging stuff).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frankminite ... gun-sales/

I realize I'm the only one who posts stuff here, and probably everyone has closed their mind to anything other than agreement with their existing chosen view, but Forbes does a pretty good job once again at discussing the attacks on the Bill of Rights. It's frustrating that often the same people who will go to such extreme extents to protect the widest conceivable definition of the First Amendment will exercise equal vigor in destroying the Second. And so often they argue from a position of self-assured ignorance making claims of self-evidence in the manner of a creationist arguing that it's so obvious their particular deity of choice created all of the universe in a week a few thousand years ago that they shouldn't even have to argue it. They use woodpeckers and bumblebees and bananas fitting the human fist as arguments the same way the anti-gun types use "assault weapons" and Virginia Tech.

Here's a couple choice snippets, and then the link. I suggest skimming it at least.

"The muskets used in the American Revolution were designed for soldiers in war theaters [and used for hunting and sport]. Lever-action [hunting] rifles were used in Indian wars and in the American Civil War....Many deer hunters today use bolt-action rifles and many have “sporterized” 1903s. The same can be said about every other type of long gun."

"So the so-called “assault-weapons” ban was a bit like trying to ban sports cars by banning tail fins."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frankminite ... un-rights/